59. The Many Mansions. The Ms. of this hitherto unpublished sermon is dated, “The Sabbath after the seating of the New Meeting House, Dec. 25, 1737.” The occasion was one of special interest to the people of Northampton. The old meeting house, erected in 1661, had become too small for the congregation and dangerously dilapidated; in fact, on a Sunday in March in the year the new building was completed, while Edwards was preaching, just after he had “laid down his doctrines” from the text, “Behold, ye despisers, wonder and perish,” the front gallery, “with a noise like a clap of thunder,” suddenly and dramatically fell. Fortunately—by a special providence, it seemed to Edwards—no one of the hundred and fifty persons, more or less, involved in the catastrophe perished or even had a bone broken, and only ten were hurt “so as to make any great matter of it.”
But the event showed that the building of a new meeting house had been undertaken none too soon. The question of this new building had been brought forward in the town meeting of the spring of 1733, but it was first decided on in November 1735, determined in part, no doubt, by the great revival of that year, when sixty, eighty, and a hundred were received into the church on successive communions. It then took two years to complete the structure. Incidentally, sixty-nine gallons of rum, besides numerous barrels of “cyder” and beer, were consumed by the workmen during the erection of the framework alone. Sixty men were engaged at 5s. a day for this part of the work, “they keeping themselves”—as Deacon Hunt’s journal has it—“excepting drinks.”
When the building, like several others of the period, a commodious, oblong structure with a tower, belfry, and weather-cock vane at one end of it, was nearly finished, the important matter of seating the congregation was taken up. This also was an affair of the town. It had already been decided at the annual town meeting in the spring to have pews along the walls and “seats” or benches only on both sides of the “alley” (broad aisle). The actual plan of the sittings, still extant, shows pews also around the benches on the floor, separated from the wall pews by the narrow aisles, and five pews in the gallery. These pews were of the high, square variety, with seats on hinges, and were evidently regarded as places of superior dignity. Towards the end of the year, the town held a series of meetings with special reference to the seating. The question of primary importance concerned the apportioning of the sittings according to social rank. At the meeting in November, a committee of five of the most prominent citizens was instructed to draw up “their Scheme or Platt for Seating of the Meeting House and present it to the Town” for approval. The following month the committee was further instructed by the following votes:
“1. Voted That in Seating the new meeting House the committee have Respect principally to men’s estate.
“2. To have Regarded for men’s Age.
“3. Voted that some Regard and Respect [be paid] to men’s usefulness, but in a less Degree.” And that no mistake should be made, a committee of six was appointed to “estimate the pews and seats,” that is, to “dignify” or appraise their social value.
Another connected question concerned the seating of the sexes. At the meeting in November, it was voted that males should be at the south, females at the north, end; the men at the right of the pulpit, and the women at the left. At the first meeting in December, the town distinctly refused to allow men and their wives to sit together. But this was clearly opposed to the sentiment of some of the more influential members of the community, for at the adjourned meeting four days later, when “The Question was put whether the Committee is forbidden to Seat men & their wives together, Especially Such as Incline to Sit together: It passed in the Negative.” Under this indirect and qualified authorization, married people were for the most part seated together in the pews, but apart on the benches, while in some cases the husband was assigned to a pew and the wife to a bench.
The events and conditions here described are reflected in Edwards’s sermon, especially in what he says of the extent of the “accommodations” in heaven and in his remarks on the “seats of various dignity and different degrees and circumstances of honor and happiness” there, as compared with what we find in houses of worship on earth.
As indicating the size of Edwards’s Northampton congregation, it may be interesting to observe that the seating plan above referred to contains the names of nearly six hundred persons. And he had his audience all about him. The pulpit, surmounted by a huge sounding board, was in the middle of one of the longer sides of the building, not at the end, as is the custom now. For further particulars, see J. R. Trumbull, History of Northampton, Vol. II, Chap. vi.
This sermon
is more fully written out than most of Edwards’s unpublished sermons. In
preparing the copy for the present volume, the editor had in mind the general
analogy of the other sermons here published. The abbreviations—X (Christ), G.
(God), F. H. (Father’s House), etc.—have accordingly been interpreted, and
omitted sentences or phrases, indicated in the Ms. by dashes or spaces, have
been supplied from the context. All such additions, however, are inserted
within square brackets.
